Dash: Evan Duffield at LaBitConf (Mexico City) Dec 2015 = C15E05

Very interesting concept It's mind boggling how much is actually going on in the Bitcoin ecosystem It's actually hard to keep track of So I'm going to be talking about Bitcoin and a two tiered network Um, where is my???laughter Ah, here we go

Perfect So, I'm Evan Duffield, I'm a software engineer I've been programming since I was 15 (years old) And as a little bit of background, I'm really interesting in finance, economics, machine learning, and these types of things So when I got into Bitcoin, it was just fascinating it captivated my interest And what I wanted to do was I wanted to tinker with Bitcoin at like a really low level I wanted to mess with the protocol and I wanted to test things that you really can only do with your own currency

And so, what we've been doing is really adventurous things that you know you could never get into the Bitcoin project Because they're just too dangerous But with a small little network like this you can do things, because we can be really nimble with what we do And so, what have we been doing? Um, some of the projects have been what we call a two tiered network, As opposed to a single tiered network on the Bitcoin network and then decentralized funding and decentralized governance

So how does that work exactly? Well, if you think of Bitcoin like a job network, I would argue that it's actually the first truly decentralized job network But there's only really one job, and it's mining currently And so, what we did was we added a new job And we call these people Masternode Operators and they run our infrastructure for us And basically what we do is we require that they run specific types of hardware, and then we can actually rely on that hardware

So, how has it been working for us? I would say amazingly well We've added hundreds of these Masternodes which are full nodes, which service the network over the past 12 months We have 3400 currently and about 4500 full nodes As opposed to the Bitcoin network which has about 5800 And so we have a comparable infrastructure to the bitcoin network, which is pretty amazing because we are at about 1/400 of the size

So how do you run one of these Masternodes on our network? (audio fades) Well, all you do is buy some coins these nodes are collateralize, which means that they can not be faked

And all you do then is you configure your whole node and then join the second tier And you get paid, so you get compensated and you use that money to pay for the cost of the server And, the neat thing about the collateralize second tier is that you can do really cool things

Based off of that collateral, there is 1000 dash and that has a public key And the public key has a private key that only you know So you can sign messages to the network You have a secure communication protocol on the second tier and we implement decentralized voting with that With the decentralized voting (sorry mic issues) Yah, good to know – (laugh) It is on, Ok, so With the second tier, we have a collateralize full node network There we go, that's a lot better Now I can hear it (laughs) And basically, we have thousands of these full nodes and each of them have 1000 dash collateral tied to them That collateral has a public key and a private key

And so the public key is known by the network The private key is only known by the person running that full node, which is running as a Masternode So what do you do with this? You can do interesting things, such as implementing decentralized voting, So imagine thousands of these collateralize nodes voting on topics on the network Then you can do even more interesting things like, you can build decentralized funding So what if you allocate a piece of the block reward and then you have people that are running these nodes voting on where to send the money to and so, you could propose things to the network and get them paid

Um, and then you can also govern the network And, you could answer questions, pretty much instantaniously, about what direction the network should go in So here is our decentralized governance and funding system And we've only had this for 3 months now And over the 3 months, we've funded 3 different conferences, one in Mexico, one in Florida and one in the Netherlands

And it actually paid for our airfair, for the hotels, and things like that because the people that are promoting the currency or doing work for it shouldn't have to bare the cost of doing it themselves And this stuff is actually paid directly from the blockchain Also, we bought a new website, dashorg, from the blockchain itself I think it's actually the first domain to ever be purchased directly from a blockchain

And we fund our business development with this method So, how could you apply something like this to Bitcoin? Well, I think first you've got to imagine what makes the perfect bitcoin? And I don't know the answer to how the bitcoin developers or the community would want to use this technology, but I just want to open a conversation about, you know, what would it be like if they had decentralized funding and decentralized governance It could be pretty neat There's definitely an issue with the full node relationship and the transaction volume that the network is doing As transaction volumes rise, the full nodes actually fall off

And with a second tier, you automatically fix this issue And so then, what else do you get? We want to scale the Bitcoin ecosystem and we want to be able to support millions of mobile devices So I've come up with a couple of strategies of doing this with a two tiered network So you want to support millions of these mobile devices and you could actually do it with a decentralized SPV installation What if you had all of the second tier nodes running SPV? And then you point a round robin DNS at this second tier? And then now, you have thousands of them bearing the load of the entire network

And then you could also have decentralized funding like we're using, or decentralized governance You could probably even implement Bitcoin Lightening in a similar fashion I was also thinking about governance What if you proposed the BIPs to the network via the second tier and have the vote on them? So then we would have an instantaneous way of telling how the network feels about individual proposals And, this, this could be

it's sybil proof because the second tier is collateralized It's instantaneous and then the network has an immediate direction that it can go in They could also have a funding system like we have and they could actually pay for the core development directly from the blockchain

Currently it's financed by grant money and it used to be financed by donations and from a foundation So I can see this as being a vast improvement Here is the decentralized SPV idea All you do is you point that round robin DNS at the second tier, and then you have the mobile wallets point at the second tier And then, it should scale, because it's thousands of servers

So how would they do this? I don't really know, they would have to plan and implement it and these are some of the smartest people I've ever met, so I'm sure they could do an amazing job It does require that part of the block reward gets allocated for the second tier so that it compensate them, and it requires that part of the block reward would get allocated to decentralized funding as well And then you trustlessly detect and pay the Masternodes that are on the system And then you should be able to scale rather efficiently So, what's the conclusion? I would say that we should start talking about this and see what the Bitcoin community thinks about adopting something like this on the Bitcoin network

As a short announcement, we're opensourcing Dash Evolution today which it's basically what I've been talking about times 100 We want to implement something like a decentralized paypal on top of our decentralized currency Where you could basically log into your mobile wallet and then it would connect to the second tier

We would store all of the needed information that you use on the second tier encrypted, such as friends lists, and things like that So I could friend somebody, and I would send them 5 of my next public keys to use, and they would send me 5 of their next public keys, then I could literally just click their name, click, I want to send you 2 dash, and then click send And I think that's a pretty powerful feature if it's completely network wide And that's the type of stuff that we're building into Dash Evolution So if you're interested in that, go to dashevolution

com and check out the new papers That's it, thanks, thanks alot (clapping) (host) I will do, like, try to summarize because all of these are very like high level, or very complex ideas But, my remarks, and then I will give the microphone to you so you can correct me or expand my assumptions, but um Well, Evan, you have developed a consensus model, ah, a governance model for a cryptocurrency and an incentive model that is governed by that consensus model that you created, and I think that's amazing and that's something that Bitcoin is lacking in terms of giving incentives to full nodes that are the auditors of the network so I think you're finding or trying to find a solution to a very big systemic risk of Bitcoin, so I think it's very interesting, very exciting to see what you have done And that consensus also applies to the development and to the evolution of your own platforms So that's my summerizing of you and then you will expand on it Alexandre, you were talking about doing a secure, like a cold storage using an old smart phone, a not just smart but an old phone (Alexandre) "Airplane Mode phone!" Yah, like a Nokia 1100, something like that? That's interesting, the hacker in me craves for it

And then, I realize what your doing Louis, you're creating a layer, you're creating a layer on top of the cryptocurrencies layer I think this layer (stuff?) concept is growing everywhere, I mean we are wondering that Bitcoin is just one layer but we have to build like in the OSi model I mean, we have to build layers on top of it whether it's Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency but stop trying to make Bitcoin do everything (Luis) exactly (Host) Relying on Bitcoin for what it does well (Luis) The ecosystem is growing from down like in several layers of protocols that's started from the top down

with the idea of the strong segmentation – that's why we build all this stuff with plugins so as to (Host) Yah, let me summerize, then you will talk I have the power now! (laughter) So, as I was saying, I think what was exciting about you is your project is this concept of building a layer on top of the layers that exist and bringing more functionality and I think you share with Ira this concept of bringing in (a) framework

That's something we will see more and more happening, I mean building frameworks so others can focus on the last layer that is the one that interacts with users So I think that's very interesting, I will read deeper into your platform, I really like fermat And finally, what Ira is saying, I live it in my own flesh Because Rootstock is the kind of project that everybody wants, everybody loves, but it's difficult to fund Because, the business model is a complex one I mean there is a business model but it's a very complex one

So I think we have to find a solution to keep creating the tools that bring more value to the ecosystem, to the decentralized ecosystem and find a way, so maybe, and that's maybe a long shot, but taking something of what Evan did, and putting it into what you're building, we can find a solution So I think, that's my summarizing, I hope it helps the ones that are not so technical because I think it's difficult to grasp (what) all these guys were talking about And now you have 30 seconds to wrap up, to correct me, to expand (Ira) I'd like to use my 30 seconds to agree with you I think we're all working on very similar things, we're all definitely working towards the same goals, and I'm very excited to I didn't know about any of your well, I've known about Dash for a while, but I learned a lot more, and I'm just excited to work more with you guys we're making it happen, so

(Evan) It's, It's been interesting meeting everybody because I've found the same project being run by different people multiple times so we're all after the same thing, just in completely different ways and I think now is the time that you figure out the best possible way to do it, and then we follow that path And I think that's really the end goal (Alexandre) Yah, I think we are reaching the end of the beginning where the infrastructure will be completely ready

And we're very very close now And it's still- this is something I used to talk about back in 2010, I mean people thought I was talking about like a "Farmville" money And still, that's what the public thinks we're talking about, Farmville money You know, we buy a new house for Farmville, they still don't understand the military grade cryptography, and the infrastructure that's been built silently over these years (Luis) Ok, I will agree with you

Basically, what we had in mind was to build something to enable a strong segmentation in order to give each possible user a custom tailored solution Not done by ourselves, but by letting other people by reusing these components to find niches of user interfaces or functionality that any segments in the world can use Basically, so we build from the top down, until we find the protocols that we need, yah, down there We, we find kind of an empty space within the ecosystem (host) Ok, thank you very much, a big applause for the panel

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